About

Poulomi Basu is a storyteller, artist and activist. Her name sounds like ‘follow me’ with a ‘P’.

She was raised by her mother in Calcutta, India and found early inspiration in the city’s rich cinematic history. After her father’s sudden death when Poulomi was 17, her mother told her to leave home as soon as her studies were complete so that she may follow her dreams and live a life of breadth and choices that was denied to her.

Since then, Poulomi prefers the path less trodden. She has slept in the wilderness under a cloudless sky staring at a million stars in search of a guerrilla army whose story strikes right at the very heart of modern India’s global ambitions, through to divided families eking out an Alaskan existence on the last rocky outpost of American soil.

Time and again, she has found herself amongst ordinary people who quietly challenge the prevailing orthodoxies of the world in which they live: rural women in armed conflict, a mother's pain for a son lost to ISIS, to the wonder of a near blind child reaching for the light.

Poulomi is forever in awe of the resilience shown by those in extraordinary circumstance, by those who are bent but not broken.

Poulomi’s work has become known for documenting the role of women in isolated communities and conflict zones and more generally for advocating for the rights of women.

As a result of Poulomi’s work in putting this issue of menstruation and hidden and normalised forms of violence against women on the international agenda she was invited in January 2017 by Al-Jazeera to be a guest on The Mystery of Mensuration edition of their programme The Stream.

In December 2015, she shared a platform with the parents of the Nirbhaya Delhi rape victim talking about her social activist initiative, The Rape in India Project. And, in January 2016 at the UN Young Changemakers Conclave, Poulomi spoke on the social impact of sustainable development with specific reference to her long-term project A Ritual of Exile and her collaboration with NGO Water Aid and their To Be A Girl campaign, which raised £2 million, using this material.